We will be here for a few more months. It was a good choice for us to stay, with the construction going on in Iquitos—what a mess! (Praise the Lord the girls and I weren’t in Peru for all that!)

While we’ve met with a few friends, my daughters and I have kept quite busy with homeschooling (including reading and speech therapy), church, park, and library. I go to the gym once a week, am trying to diet with the Daniel Plan, and am seeing a chiropractor. I deal with constant fatigue and pain, so the girls and I are content to read books and spend time together in this cooler environment.

While I am here, it would help Seeds of Love to be able to share with your friends, church, Sunday school class, or small group. Let me know dates I can come, and we will set that up! Thanks.

On September 26, 2006, Josue came to my apartment in Iquitos, and kind of nervously tossed me a T-shirt. I opened it and it said, “Will you marry me?” He got down on one knee and, with a ring in his hand, said, “I love you. So….will you?” I happily said, “Of course!” He put the ring on me, I put on the T-shirt, and…we are still in love 10 years later!

I am so amazed at all Josue is doing in Peru–this weekend is the huge anniversary celebration for the youth group, including a city-wide Christian concert that Josue organized. Check out next week’s post!

Plus Josue continues to work on the house–he’s been going non-stop and doing a great job. I am blessed to have such a faithful, hard-working, and cute husband!

After 3 weeks straight of hard labor under the Amazon sun from 4am to 11pm, Josue and brothers finished replacing our 30×11 meter roof! Josue hired extra men to get it done quicker to try to to avoid damage from the torrential rains, common to the Amazon rainforest! They treated the wood and put it up. Meshi (who lived with us his teen years and is now in missions) is a great builder (he was the foreman of the chapel at Arrows of Love). When he went up to replace the wood, the beams actually crumbled under him. He said it’s a miracle the whole roof hadn’t collapsed (ruining everything in our house/ministry), and what a blessing to replace the roof now, regardless of the extra cost.

Well, it rained almost every day, so the work went slower than expected, thus raising the cost of labor. The electrical wires, up in our attic, and the walls in our house, got extremely wet, and took several days to dry out, so there was no electricity or Internet in the house for about a week. But, praise the Lord, our house made it pretty much unscathed.

Then came the second half of the upstairs. dun-dun-dun-duuun! Despite Josue’s best efforts, the one night the men couldn’t finish a section of the roof, it rained…hard. Josue sent me a short video showing a mini-Niagara Falls in that half of the house. (If you want to see it, I will forward it to you, but I can’t get it attached here–The photos below don’t do justice to the problem.) It effectively ruined most of the ceiling. So unfortunately much of it must be replaced, which of course we were not planning on. Josue will not attend the leadership school he’d planned to go to. Instead he will hire his siblings, and together they will spend the next few weeks fixing the ceiling. He is very tired and we miss him so much, so once he finishes the house (including painting our guest room) and organizing the ministry (the children’s clubs and youth group) to run smoothly for the next few months, he will come back here in mid-October. We are so happy that we will be able to spend some downtime together before heading back to Peru. Our girls are so excited–they cry almost every night, missing Papa.

When I talked to Josue, he said how glad he was that we are not there and have a place to stay here, that he was able to get these huge jobs completed so that, in his words, his girls will have a dry, safe home to return to in Peru! Thank you, dear Josue! He sends his thanks to all who are giving extra donations to help us out. Gracias!

Seeds of Love has returned to this webpage! We are excited for you to read all about our ministry and what the Lord is doing in the Amazon through Seeds of Love. Stay with us–it’s gonna be a great ride with eternal rewards!!!

Although we have not used this email for 3 years, you will find all our weekly newsletters/ blogs will be posted here, as well as information about Seeds of Love to help you understand our ministry better and to pass on to your friends!

If you do not already receive our weekly newsletters, go to the subscribe page to sign up. You can check out ways to get involved and to pray for us–there’s now a place where you can leave a prayer!

This Saturday, just like every Saturday, our children´s intercession group prayed for you, supporters of our ministry and children´s sponsors. We are grateful for all you do, and pray for health and blessing over each of you! We are encouraged to see our children learn about the power of prayer, and are excited to see the answers that will follow.
(Pix: Natali, Christina, Rosa, Jahaziel, Manuel, Greysi)

By poetry we mean the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colors—Thomas B. Macaulay

Ministering to children through the gift of teaching makes me feel alive. It´s exciting to see my students learn new concepts and express themselves in new ways. Three days a week from January to February, I taught a poetry/art class (part of my graduate work over 10 years ago!). I had taught this course before, but this was the first time in Spanish! The students learned to use words creatively to make nonsensical and meaningful poems, incorporating art. They incorporated into their poetry onomatopoeia, Bible verses, acrostics, free verse, rhyme and rhythm, cinquain, and haiku. They learned to draw stylistic portraits with oil pastels. The kids were stretched and grew in their ability to write poetry. Beautiful!

Here is our final poem (translated):
WHERE I´M FROM
By Jahaziel, Greysi, Iris, Oscar, Alberto, and Rachel
26 February 2013

I am from the drum stick.
I am from chalk.
I am from the fish hook.
I am from magic tricks.
I am from a leaf.
I am from a smile.
I am from swimming in the river.

I am from a pirouette.
I am from the ballet ribbon.
I am from Psalm 19.
I am from jumping rope.
I am from the sunflower.
I am from Mama´s cooking.
I am from the kitty cat.

I am from volleyball.
I am from bread.
I am from mathematics.
I am from choreographies.
I am from tears.
I am from joy.
I am from taking walks.

I am from CR7.
I am from the photograph.
I am from coconut.
I am from letters of the alphabet.
I am from adventures.
I am from playing defense.
I am from a joke.

I am from cement and a saw.
I am from the goal post.
I am from fish in the water.
I am from mangos.
I am from praising God.
I am from the earth in a garden.
I am from mission trips.

I am from words.
I am from the child´s heart.
I am from a butterfly´s colors.
I am from peace.
I am from rain and wind.
I am from the voice of God.
I am from traveling.